A general view of Elite Dangerous
22 Jun 2023Magdalena1685
Sometime around 2017-18 my interest was piqued regarding Elite Dangerous when watching some old video by some older man.He said that the Elite game of the 1980s had helped get him through a divorce. He said it with emotion and passion.
[Sidenote: I think he also said that he only ever did trade in the game; no combat.]
Anyway, that was enough for me to give it a go. It was a game I had already heard of and I must have been looking for some kind of space game to play. My earliest forays into them were Space Quest 3 (Sierra Games), a brief look at Wing Commander (the one with Mark Hamill acting in it - so funny!) and Freelancer from Microsoft which I really enjoyed.
Elite Dangerous was not easy. One had to be patient learning the little details and idiosyncrasies with regard to piloting, combat, missions, engineering - alien upgrades(!), etc. The overall things that hooked me was the ambition towards true physics, the ludicrous potential for exploration in the sad emptiness of space, with the possibility of finding a planet not yet discovered. What a wonderful pioneering achievement, way back in the 1980s.
Then, after watching interviews with the erudite and personable David Braben I think became a "proper" fan of the game.
All activity and achievements are logged and recorded. Because there is no end-game or main story path, there is never a reason to finally stop playing ED. I know I'll always come back to it and perhaps take a long trip to a new part of the galaxy (having first outfitted a spaceship accordingly).
Despite all the thousands of ED players in the world, only 0.059% of the galaxy's systems have been discovered! I LOVE that.